


Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

by zinjadu



Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: Brothers, Dysfunctional Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Backstory about Allan-a-Dale and his brother, Tom.  Written a while ago, rehosting here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves

“Get here, you two!” their father shouted, but not angrily. For the first time in months the old man was happy. That had everything to do with the streak of luck they had got on since spring. Easy mark after easy mark had come their way. Allan and Tom had even managed to become regular props in their little plays. Sickly children, dead children, or clever little pickpockets. Never a dull day, never the same horizon, and Allan couldn’t be happier. 

“Wait up!” Tom cried, and Allan slowed down but wanted to be the first to greet their father. He was rewarded well, swept up in his father’s arms, swung around and put down as Tom caught up and given the same treatment. 

“Get anything for us, Da?” Allan asked, ever hopeful for a bit of something from town. He didn’t like that they had to split up to do town runs. Someone might recognize all of them together, so only their father went. Allan wanted to go into town just to buy things, not to steal from people, though that was fun, too. 

“Course I did, son,” his father said, ruffling his hair. Tom still in one arm, his father reached into his coat and brought out a small dagger. “Didn’t even have to pay for it, neither,” he said, winking. 

And for whatever reason, instead of enjoying that his father had gotten one over on somebody, Allan felt disappointed. Would it’ve been too much to buy a dagger? For his own son. 

Probably. 

But Tom was laughing, their father was smiling and their mother hadn’t threatened to leave in months. 

It was a good day. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

Not all days were good days. 

Allan had been on the road all of his twelve years of life. Never in one place for any kind of time. Long enough to trick someone out of their purse, poach a deer, or nick a few items in town. And all those years he had only ever known his family, a loose connection of them all over the dales of England, a roving pack of thieves and scoundrels, never meeting up for long. 

He could only remember his father, mother and brother being any kind of fixed point. His family and their home, a rickety wagon that had seen as many miles as Allan himself. 

He thought of all this while his father floundered in explaining their goods to the patrol who had stopped them. They had stayed in one place a bit too long, their father driven by just enough parts greed and laziness to refrain from moving on. That had been enough to call down the attention of the local sheriff and his men. 

Allan saw his family being robbed, their earnings taken away, and his father not up the task of fixing it. He was the oldest son, and he had a job to do. For his family. 

“Pardon sir,” Allan said, using his best subservient voice, keeping his eyes down and putting himself slightly forward. “Begging your pardon,” he said again, not wanting to speak before acknowledged. Patrols could be touchy. 

“Speak, boy,” the commander said, a hard looking man with an imposing beard and beady black eyes. 

“As I said, begging your pardon,” Allan continued, touching his hand to his forelock now and again for good measure. “We’re simple tinkers and traders. And me father is a bit slow, got his head kicked by our horse some years ago. He has bad days, sirs.” 

Allan did not miss the glare his father shot him, but kept quiet and even went so far as to assume an expression of simple-seeming. His father nodded his head, like a dumb man, and smiled. 

The lead patrol man grunted and gestured to the wagon. A couple of his men broke off from the detachment and dismounted, ready to ransack their home. Allan had to keep them out of there, somehow. 

“Wait!” Allan shouted. The men did not stop, and the lead man made to kick at him, but Allan scampered out of the way and kept on talking in a breathless rush. “You can’t go in there! My brother is sick! My mother’s tending after him, but it’s catching! My father and I can’t go in, neither!” he shouted it, sure that his voice would carry to the patrolmen approaching the wagon and his mother and brother inside. They would get ready to make everything look as Allan said it had. 

That did stop the men. The lead man gave Allan a hard stare. “Why didn’t you say so earlier, boy?” 

Allan hung his head, looking ashamed and very sorry. “Didn’t want to say, if’n I could avoid it, sir. Don’t like to spread it about that my brother’s sick. People won’t come to us for help if we come in with sickness. Was why we had to leave town so fast, sir. Didn’t want them to drive us out.” 

The lead man sat on his horse, his gaze weighing heavily on Allan, his father, the men he had dispatched, and the wagon. Then he nodded. “We don’t want to carry sickness around ourselves. Let them pass.” 

“Thank you, sir,” Allan said, bowing again. “God smile on you and yours, sir.” Then he grabbed his father’s hand and made a show of leading him back to the wagon. Once his father was seated, Allan took the drivers spot of the wagon and snapped the reigns, clicked his tongue, setting the horses off. Slowly, too slowly for Allan’s liking, they left the patrol behind. Running would have only made them chase, so they had to crawl. 

Once out of sight, Allan breathed a sigh of relief, directed the team off the road and stopped. He had to go check on Tom and Mother and—-

His father hit him, knocking him out of the seat and onto the hard ground. 

“What was that for?!” Allan yelled. 

“I was doing fine, boy,” his father growled. “Didn’t need my pup of a son to come in and call me an idiot to get us through.” 

Mother and Tom had emerged, his little brother watching the proceedings with sharp eyes. His mother watched as well, her mouth compressed to a thin line. 

Allan glared at his father, and for the first time noticed the reddening of his nose from too much drink, the haggard caste to his face, and how he never seemed to be as sharp as he should have been. He lay there in the dirt for a while longer, letting his father get back in control of himself. His mother and brother helped him up and took him inside. His mother sat him down and cleaned off his cuts and bruises while his brother watched, and the wagon rolled on. 

“I thought that was a good bit of work,” Tom said finally. Their mother said nothing, only continued to clean her son’s blood away from his face. 

“Thanks, Tom,” Allan said, breaking into a grin. “I thought so, too.” He winced as his mother was a bit too rough with her cleaning. 

“Hold still,” she ordered. “Don’t do that Allan, ever again. Don’t make your father a fool.” 

“Bit late for that, isn’t it?” Allan said before he could stop himself. Then his mother slapped him, her open hand flying across the very same place his father had struck him. 

“Don’t speak that way about your father,” she whispered harshly. She stood and sat back down on the simple bed set into the back of the wagon, picking up some sewing and setting to work on it. 

Allan gingerly touched his face, the cut still open and his cheek already a mottled patchwork of yellows, browns and purples. Tom gave him a cheeky grin and leaned down to quietly whisper, “I still thought you were brilliant.” 

And that made everything better. It really did. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 

Then there were days that were the worst. 

They hadn’t had any fresh food, their father had failed to find game, even risking the king’s own lands, and they had narrowly avoided too many scrapes. Fifteen now, and Allan had done his best to make up for his father’s lack, but there was only so much he could do without making the old man aware of what he was doing. 

Their mother had grown thinner and quieter, sewing and playing her part in a con, but precious little else. 

Tom had become a master pickpocket, if a horrible liar. And Allan. Allan had learned ever aspect of their life inside and out. He could poach, he could steal, and most importantly, he could lie. He had perfected hundreds of lies and fabrications, with just enough truth to make it work. He crafted cons in his sleep, little ways to get more out of his father’s plans. 

But most importantly, he kept coins for himself, and had instructed Tom to do the same. They both had small stashes, hidden in the wagon where neither of their parents would look. 

And today was the day they would leave this sorry excuse for a family for good. Allan had just decided. 

They had returned from another failed attempt to get this family a little more money, a little more than nothing, and their father had ruined his own plan. Drunk and useless, their father had let slip that they were up to something, and all it took was one man who thought a bit faster than the rest of the villagers, and they were run out of town. 

No money, barely any food, and their parents were little help. So they would leave. Allan reckoned he was nearly a man grown now, and he should strike out on his own anyway. And of course he’d bring his brother with him. They could make it, together, and maybe get a bit more out of life than running and scamming from village to village. A bit of lush in the life would be nice. 

In the middle of the night, he tapped Tom awake, a finger to his lips to keep Tom quiet. His brother nodded, and moved like a cat through the wagon, getting their things while Allan gathered the horses. 

Outside the wagon, Tom was waiting for his brother, grinning and excited to be off. “What’s going on, Allan?” 

“We’re leaving, Tom,” Allan said, mounting his horse, and taking his things from Tom. “Get on and let’s go.” 

“And Mum and Da?” Tom asked, and Allan could tell that there was little sympathy or concern in his brother’s voice, more curiosity. 

“They’ll have to do with out us, or the horses. We can do better than this, little brother. You know. And I’ll look out for you,” Allan promised. 

Tom grinned and got on the other horse. “Not for long, you won’t. You’ll see, I’ll be as good as you and better. You’ll only get caught, I bet, without me.” 

“Right,” Allan scoffed. “Now keep up.” And he nudged the horse into a brisk walk, not wanting to race in the middle of the night, and at least Tom knew well enough to do that as well. 

And they rode off into the night, away from a luckless father, and a shrewish mother, away from poor plans and no money. They rode to freedom, men in their own right, pulling cons and drunk on their own success. Allan never did find out what happened to his parents, and it would be three years before Tom would leave his older brother while he slept, taking the money, the horses and his only means of defending himself save one; save the dagger his father had stolen all those years ago. 

It would be years before Allan would be on his own, poaching more often than not in the hard times, and then poaching in Nottingham, far away from the dales of his childhood. Years before Robin of Loxley would save his life and give him something to believe in, a way of putting his natural talents and honed skills to a greater use. 

Years before he would break his promise and fail to protect Tom. 

Years down the road, unforeseen and unasked for, so for now Allan-a-Dale rode and did not care about who he left behind, only knowing that he rode on to greater things.


End file.
